The Poetry Of.
Henri Dumolet...................................................
Don't We Still Love?
I.
For two days we were happy.
And in the center of that happiness
We walked on the Sacred way,
Ruin around us, to the Palatine.
Climbing, we heard the bells.
From Rome and the ruin beneath
The sound rose in the grey sky
Through the cedar and the cypress
To drop on the grass of the Palatine crest.
We were surrounded by the bells.
They sounded November.
Our few hours.
There was the vague suggestion of a bird's song.
"For whom the bells toll," I said.
Not to her, but to the hill
Perhaps to the possible bird.
II.
We sat on a low wall by a rose garden.
That held a last tall open rose.
I went to it, thinking "that is her rose."
But near, I saw the rose was brown with time.
I pressed the one fresh petal in her hand.
She held it, and then put it in her pocket.
As she had put the ticket for the Forum.
Was it our moments she was saving?
Or was she merely saving Rome?
Something monumental
Not a moment with a paltry thing.
"Time is against us," she said.
"Time is not just against us," I said, "time is against Rome."
III.
We walked from the garden
We passed an old man reading to a patient boy.
The oleander was not in flower.
The dust from the Forum rose up the hill.
We looked from the terrace of Villa Farnese.
We looked on time's victory below.
We looked at stones collected to build Rome.
And at the stones taken from her.
We looked at the idea of a city that does not end.
I remember the illusion of a silent person at my side
Who looked at me in that way
That made it credible she loved me.
Although she said,
"You are too old. Time is against you."
"I can become more young."
"You cannot become more young."
"Rome is eternal," I said.
IV.
We walked toward the Coliseum.
As always scaffolding covered Constantine's Arch.
The ruined city was waiting to begin.
Romulus and Il Duce waited to happen.
We were in the midst of waiting, the dust of all waiting.
I in my bush jacket and years.
She in her young large eyes and silence
Waiting silently for Rome.
The stones and fallen pillars and the bells stretched far away.
There had been no flowers on the Spanish steps
To lie to us that we would always be together.
And that anything could be overcome by love.
V.
She says to you what your heart hears.
What it most fears, sometimes what it most desires.
What she says is what you know is true.
It is what you know you deserve.
What you have been expecting.
It is not that she is constant,
She changes her mind
But she says the truth of the moment.
She says the best truth she can,
The truth that is like feeling a blow you know
Is coming, a blow you have probably deserved.
I had said a truth at Trevi,
"Throw in three coins," I said, "and you will return more happy."
"When will we return?" she said,
"When we are more happy."
"How will that be," she said.
"We may not be together."
VI.
We walked from the Palatine and Coliseum
Through fog and bells and stones,
To Saint Mary's porch, a sudden damp Darkness and a smell of age,
Where the Mouth hangs.
The great bronze mask that I have always feared.
"Will you leave me if I put in my hand, and say what is not true?"
"Of course," she said, "you are no good to me without a hand."
"Will you say a truth to the Mouth?"
"If I lost my hand you would lose interest."
I put my hand in the Mouth and I looked at her and said, "I love you."
And the hand did not come off.
What have I ever done more brave?
Of course, it may come off some day.
Nothing is known about the timing of the penalty
Even for the lie that all men tell, the lie they think is true,
The lie they try to live, the lie that does them in.
VII.
We entered Navonna at the side of the bigger Bernini
And walked through the colors of the stone.
It takes time for stone to take those tones.
Navonna has its own necessities.
We had lunch in an open cafe.
Near an oriental couple with an older man
Whose face was the world but who looked at
A young woman as if she was his consolation and reward.
What I did not think my adored would be for me.
The sun shifted and the skin of my lady took on
The tones of the Piazza, all of its texture and complexity
She had become Navonna, had resolved the difference
Between flesh and time and stone.
But she could not make me young.
A man came to the edge of the tables and sang an interminable chant
That repeated the phrase, "Navonna, Navonna."
She asked me for translation,
"In the middle of my life," I said, "I found that I had lost my way."
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